Celebrities Remember TV Trailblazer Mary Tyler Moore After Her Death

Mary Tyler Moore, star of TV classic Mary Tyler Mooreand Best Actress Oscar nominee for Ordinary People, died at age 80 on January 25. As news of her passing spread, tributes rolled in from both the many entertainers who had worked with Moore in her decades in film and television and those who'd wished they had the chance to.

"Today we mourn the passing of one of the groundbreaking stars of Television, Mary Tyler Moore..." Bette Middler tweeted. Moore's best-known character, Mary Tyler Moore's Mary Richards, was a depiction of a spunky single American career woman — unprecedented at the time of the series' 1970 debut.

"At least a decade before the twin figures of the harried working woman and the neurotic, unwed 30-something became media preoccupations, Ms. Moore’s portrayal — for which she won four of her seven Emmy Awards — expressed both the exuberance and the melancholy of the single career woman who could plot her own course without reference to cultural archetypes," the New York Times' Virginia Heffernan wrote on Wednesday.

"Mary Tyler Moore's humor, style and vulnerability have had a profound influence on me as a television creator and on every woman I know working in television to upend expectations of traditional femininity," GIRLS creator and star Lena Dunham said in a statement (quotes via THR).

Actor and Ordinary People director Robert Redford told THR, "Mary's energy, spirit and talent created a new bright spot in the television landscape and she will be very much missed. The courage she displayed in taking on a role darker than anything she had ever done was brave and enormously powerful."

See reactions to Mary Tyler Moore's death, including tributes to her legacy, below.